a reviewer wrote:

The Big Book of Masturbation from Angst to Zeal, by Martha Cornog. San Francisco: Down There Press, 2003, 335 pages. Paper, $22.00.

The Big Book of Masturbation from Angst to Zeal is an interesting, informative, and highly readable text that will be enjoyed by professionals and the general public alike. The entire book is excellent, yet there are several chapters that make this book a must-have for all who are interested in the subject. I will highlight them below.

more at Hands down! The best darn book on masturbation – Journal of Sex Research – Find Articles at BNET

note: opinions are those of the reviewer

a review of Masturbation- The History of the Great Terror

… Only in the eighteenth century, with the anonymous publication of Onania, did masturbation become a medical, rather than a moral, failing. This work gave the practice symptoms, a progression, and a terrifying prognosis and then hawked a cure as did most quack medical pamphlets of the day. (The authors do a good job of proving the quackery of the pamphlet and of the writer’s science.) The popularity of Onania sparked ever-expanding editions and imitations; anti-masturbation ideas permeated society, and Enlightenment writers such as Voltaire and Rousseau further popularized the terrifying consequences of the act. Even the great doctors of the eighteenth century like Tissot began to see masturbation as causal in illness and proceeded to treat it as a real and deadly ailment. Trips to the brothel and/or early marriage became necessary to help boys avoid the terrifying consequences of masturbation that included gonorrhea, exhaustion, enervation, and death. Stengers and Van Neck provide fascinating accounts of the ways that early misreadings of the Bible provided anti-masturbatory moralists with evidence and the ways that faulty scientific methods served to confirm medical fears.

By the nineteenth century, masturbation supposedly robbed youth of their vital energies, debilitated the body, caused insanity, and eventually led to death. Because masturbation had such dreadful consequences, educators, doctors, and parents needed to terrify and sometimes torture children for their own good. Remedies included providing gruesome illustrations, lectures, and exhortations and proceeded from the psychological to the physical including tying children’s hands down at night, maintaining careful regimens of exercise, bland food, and exhaustion, and providing constant supervision. In cases where the child continued to masturbate, brutalities like clitoridectomy, penis piercing, and spiked penis sheaths became warranted. …

a review of a classic text on masturbation

Masturbation- 100 years ago and now – Journal of Sex Research – Find Articles at BNET

… Stekel was a part of the Vienna psychoanalytic circle organized by Sigmund Freud, and Stekel participated in the original discussion the group had on onanism in 1910. This first discussion lasted for three evenings and contained so much disagreement that they dared not publish their proceedings. The group returned to the subject two years later and, although they agreed that masturbation was representative of the conflict between instinct and repression, they also agreed that the topic was quite inexhaustible.

Almost alone among the psychoanalytic group, Stekel argued that, if masturbation was entirely suppressed, the number of sexual misdeeds would increase to an immeasurable extent. He held that all sorts of forbidden yearnings that might have led to rape or pederasty found a healthy outlet in masturbation. In Stekel’s view, masturbation was entirely harmless or even benign, a position with which Freud disagreed. …

a review of three books on masturbation The decloseting of masturbation- – Journal of Sex Research – Find Articles at BNET

The Joy of Self-Pleasuring: Why Feel Guilty About Feeling Good? By Edward L. Rowan. Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2000, 226 pages. Paper, $19.00.

Masturbation as Means of Achieving Sexual Health. Edited by Walter O. Bockting and Eli Coleman. New York: Haworth, 2002, 147 pages. Paper, $17.95.

Masturbation: The History of a Great Terror. By Jean Stengers and Anne Van Neck (Translated from the French by Kathryn A. Hoffmann). New York: Palgrave, 2001, 239 pages. Hardcover, $24.95.